Children’s author Frank Cottrell Boyce, who, this week, won an award from the British national newspaper The Guardian for best fiction book for children, says that the way reading is being taught in the schools today risks putting children off of reading for the rest of their lives.  In particular, he criticizes the use of standardized...Read More

Here are some quotations that I’ve collected over the years about the amazing genius of children. “The real magic wand is the child’s own mind.” – Jose Ortega Y Gasset (Spanish philosopher) “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.” – Mencius (Chinese sage) “No Columbus, no Marco Polo has ever seen stranger and...Read More

I am sickened by a news report from Reuters on the rapid rise in the use of standardized testing at the kindergarten level.  The push for academic accountability in the higher grades has been essentially pushed downwards through the grade levels and now sits like a 10-ton block of steel on what used to be literally a “children’s garden”...Read More

I think there should be a whole new movement in education called “children’s peak experiences in learning.” There ought to be books about it, M.Ed. and Ph.D. degree programs about it, tons of research about it.  Why?  Because when we observe learning at its best, only then do we have true benchmarks to evaluate the...Read More

Maybe you’ve reached a point where you consider your child/student (choose one or more):  unmotivated, lazy, spoiled, hyper, inept, bratty, inattentive, unmanageable, messy, distractible, beyond redemption.   Before you give up on your child, consider what the following parents and teachers felt about their own children and students: “This fat, little fellow goes around in a...Read More